A 14-year-old talented student has reached the conclusion that the U.S. government could save almost $400 million dollars annually with the simple action of changing the type of font used in official documents.
Suvir Mirchandani was doing research on how his own school, located in a suburb of Pittsburgh, might save resources by reducing their use of paper an ink, the results of his investigation were so surprising that his teacher told him to look for a specialized magazine which could publish his conclusions.
According to Los Angeles Times, Suvir, a sixth grade student at Dorseyville Middle School, started its investigation as a project for a science fair.
However, Suvir's meticulous work impressed the editors of the Journal of Emerging Investigators so much, that afterwards the team of the academic publication recommended him to investigate how much the government might save if they changed the font used on official documents.
Using official documents from different institutions, the young student noticed that three fonts were used most of the time: Times New Roman, Gothic Century and Garamond.
His analysis revealed that the White House might save "approximately $234 million dollars, with savings of $62 million dollars in the worst case, or $394 million dollars in the best case," just by exclusively using 12 point Garamond, according to CNN.
According to the same source, Suvir's amazing results suggest that the save could be bigger since the study has only focused on the amount of used ink, because benefits such as saving paper and lower environmental impact have not been contemplated.
"Times New Roman is not as efficient as Garamond and the third font used by the Federal Government, Century Gothic, is actually worse than the average of other fonts," concludes Suvir's investigation, quoted by CNN.
Video via CNN.
- Contribute to this Story:
- Send us a tip
- Send us a photo or video
- Suggest a correction
